Tea Poems

I.
The seats are strangely cool
            tonight; the tea is not:
it’s yellow-green mass
           coddled in white clay.
New sounds splash on the air,
            and still there’s quiet inside.

II.
Alone, I watch my step walking
a familiar street in San Rafael.

The air tonight is oolong tea—
glowing lights wrap me up,
and tangled blankets shape the horizon.

The stars of evening shine and I
see them, knowing a moment’s peace.

By Jacob Riyeff

June Bugs

Rough branches carry the sweet burden

of plums and the holes

that June bugs leave.

I press my nails deep into purple flesh,

and juice flows


from wrist to elbow.

By Jessica Wiseman Lawrence

Helping a Blind Lady

"Sometimes I want to sit down
and never get up," she confided,
tapping her cane as we crossed

the street, her Shepherd
towing us on its leash,
the light ready to go red.

“But then I have to pee,
and I'm thankful I can
make it to the bathroom."

By Donal Mahoney

The House At Mutton Hollow

My eighty-three year old father
ascribes to the sort of contentment
that can only be derived from a door
with a hook & eye clasp.
Good, solid doors pock-marked
near the knob, further up
where the corner meets the jamb.
Brass or pewter amulets,
the least harbingers
against the unknown
but for his pets
equal to Fort Knox.

By William G. Davies Jr.

Jumper Cable Theory

Follow these directions carefully.
Park a booster car close to your dead car.
Connect positive to positive,
negative to ground.
Too many negatives will cause damage.
Start the booster car and let it run.

Listen carefully to its words.
If they speak to you
maybe there will be enough spark
to get you started.
If not, you will want to find
other poems.

By Tom Russell

Buy Me a Drink

There’s a bus
that drives past
this disgusting hotel
in Colorado where all
the bar staff know
not to sell us drinks.
They know where we are going,
like make up stories about
where we came from.
None of them are true
and none of them are nice;
not exactly lying
but close enough.

By Jessica Halsey

On the Serengeti

we watch a lioness charge
to guard an old kill from jackals
and raw-necked buzzards
though she has long since had her fill.
As others photograph the scene,
you and I hold hands, knowing well
the desperate defense
of what is dead.

By Sarah Russell

www.SarahRussellPoetry.com

Spoils

Those who know when old
Is new again
Are the bareback riders
Before
The Age of Quartz –,
Who speak ‘if’
Spoken to –,
Yet curse
A purple sage – and
The future
Without
A face.

By Stefanie Bennett

Assisted Living/Clinomania

Enough graveyard shifts
make a cryptkeeper –
even out of those who save lives.

Visiting her at work,
we saw how they flocked
to her down embrace,

she gave her ears
to the brittle voices
that blistered palms

rolling the linoleum
to empty her pockets
each capsule of her time.

By Brandyn Johnson

Lady

What makes me hang delicious in your sight,
The attitude you spread across the room.
You decorate by presence and your tools,
You set me in a country priest's delight—
I remain your mortar board and broom,
Your modern one of metal and a grip,
Sitting there you talk and make a pose,
I sort my pieces and I float.

By Alan Blaustein

Spade

Call one one

and you’re honest

as the grain of oak,

or the heft of blade

in topsoil.

You lever the handle

not to strain the back.

This one, hecho

in Mexico January 07,

was mass produced

at lowest cost

to Truper, spade boss.

It does a good job,

and usually waits

by the fire pit.

A classic, its form

descends serviceable

to inter, or remove.

Originally,

it was a spoon.

By Michael Daley

Plan A

A sign near our campsite
In the redwoods
Lists what to do
Should we encounter
A mountain lion:
• Stay put
• Try to look enormous
• Shout rudely

There is no Plan B


By Buff Whitman-Bradley

Flashback

he shot the swine between the eyes

while she bathed in the ice-cold trough out back

there’s no silk like the edging of clouds

or fuel as useful as the scorched fruit trees

horses loosed on the wind-swept

plain of powdered zinc,

wick burning low as burlap works to towel off,

her eyes greenly marbled,

the raw earth holding erect

a spine calling flesh a man, his boots mud caked

By Jay Passer